Well, we finally got to sleep late! Of course that was interrupted by Willow, barking to go out at 7 o'clock. but it was nice and cool without and nice and warm within, and it was so snuggly that it was depressing to get up and turn both alarm clocks on. :-)

So we didn't go out until noon. We had a CVS coupon, so we went there to get some BreatheRight strips. We happened to cut through the former Christmas aisle and everything was 90 percent off. I scored three packs of very pretty tissue paper, a gift card box, a candy-cane striped garland, five boxes of tinsel, and a jingle bell wreath I hope to use at the office next year for less than $5. James usually gets a pair of slippers during Christmas because almost everyone has them on sale, but we didn't see any this year, but he found a pair at CVS.

Then we went to Kroger. Now, we are expecting a steep temperature drop tomorrow. It was in the forties today, but the high tomorrow is supposed to be in the twenties, and the low tomorrow night in single digits, and it's supposed to start raining late tonight. We're not expecting snow, but we might have ice, which I'm more wary of. Apparently everyone else has been watching the weather, too, because the crowd at Kroger was massive; it looked like Christmas Eve! We threaded through the carts and people and got some chicken for Willow and steak for us and other groceries.

Once we got home and had that put away, we did two prep things: one, we brought the rest of the bird seed upstairs and put it in the barrel on the deck, as the birds were eating the remainder of the last batch. I also put out some suet. More importantly, we turned off both outside hose taps. Imagine my surprise when I went to one of the taps and saw a little grass snake lying in the pine straw. He was alive, too, because he was gone when I went back outside to confirm the tap was off.

Once done with that, it was a time to relax and read the paper, cut coupons, and listen to the last Christmas music channel left on Dish, the Traditional Holiday channel. This has been a nice background music for this season. Once done with the paper, I read more of the Christmas in... books from World Book. Nothing worth watching on the idiot box!